House sale of the year, almost.

Tommy Barker is smitten with a home sold for 4m to its first viewer

THIS is the one that crept away ... to the tune of about 4 million.

Set up for sale in mid-April, glorious Inneskerr on Cork’s Rochestown Road has won awards for having some of the best flowering gardens in the country.

It was plucked, however, in a swift pre-market deal, by the very first person who came to view it.

Its price guide was being set at 3.5 million via Margaret Kelleher of Lisney, who also sold Gortalough on the same stretch of Cork’s Golden residential quarter-mile for 4m, who was set to act as joint agent on Inneskerr with Savills Hamilton Osborne King. Terms of the deal, agreed a month ago and now signed up legally, have been kept confidential, but the market sentiment is that it must have made well over the 3.5m anticipated guide, probably making a premium, over 4m, to have been so readily taken off the market.

While Inneskerr would have been considered very much a local prize property given its size, setting and pristine grounds, the buyers who went so strong on price are believed to have come from overseas.

The sale shows how strong the very upper end of the market still is, with lots of cash for the right buy. The rest of the market may have languished in the pre-election run-up and against a backdrop of rising interest rates, but affordability isn’t an issue when individual or special houses like this go on sale.

A full-on, gardeners’ nirvana, Inneskerr was built in 1938, and in the stewardship of the vendors its gardens have won the National Championship gardens of Ireland five times. It has won the IPBS prize for best garden in Ireland eight times. Its original 1.5 acres has been divided up by the vendors (in situ for 30 years, after paying a then-record £112,500 for the home) and they’ve discretely built a new home in the rear for themselves. With 4,000 sq ft of space, six bedrooms, four bathrooms and good reception rooms, as well as an elevated conservatory on top of the large garage, Inneskerr is one of just a dozen or so truly classic, early 1900s trophy homes on large grounds at the start of the Rochestown Road.

It is quality all the way, from the front gates in and are about 100 years old, as are the almost as tall side gates to the rear garden, Liscannor flagged terraces, its horticultural glories and lily pond.

Inneskerr was set up to be the house sale of the year, and has proven to be so, even if no-one else got a chance to see it bar the fortunate low-key buyers. But its gardens were opened to the public as a charity fundraiser last month, so hundreds did get a chance to see what they could only dream of buying.

The award winning grounds, some 0.8 of an acre, include an outstanding collection of Acer trees, a huge collection of Magnolias and Rhododendron, some very rare, evergreen and deciduous Azaleas, and a range of Camelias, along with a prized specimen of Cornus Controvera Altematefolia. Colour reigns. Now it has the colour of money.